Open science in psychophysiology: An overview of challenges and emerging solutions

Abstract

The present review is the result of a one-day workshop on open science, held at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Psychophysiological Research in Washington, DC, September 2019. The contributors represent psychophysiological researchers at different career stages and from a wide spectrum of institutions. The state of open science in psychophysiology is discussed from different perspectives, highlighting key challenges, potential benefits, and emerging solutions that are intended to facilitate open science practices. Three domains are emphasized: data sharing, preregistration, and multi-site studies. In the context of these broader domains, we present potential implementations of specific open science procedures such as data format harmonization, power analysis, data, presentation code and analysis pipeline sharing, suitable for psychophysiological research. Practical steps are discussed that may be taken to facilitate the adoption of open science practices in psychophysiology. These steps include (1) promoting broad and accessible training in the skills needed to implement open science practices, such as collaborative research and computational reproducibility initiatives, (2) establishing mechanisms that provide practical assistance in sharing of processing pipelines, presentation code, and data in an efficient way, and (3) improving the incentive structure for open science approaches. Throughout the manuscript, we provide references and links to available resources for those interested in adopting open science practices in their research.